Learning to ride a bike has long been a childhood rite of passage, giving kids their first real taste of independence. But that tradition has been dramatically falling away. In 2023, about 10.9 million children ages 7 to 17 rode a bike at least six times during the year, down from an average of 20.5 million in the 1990s, according to data reported by the Atlantic from the National Sporting Goods Association.
Across the Hudson Valley, however, schools, nonprofits, and parents are working to reverse that trend by helping more children get on bikes and build the confidence to keep riding for years to come.
One organization at the forefront in Hudson is the Hudson Youth Bike Co-op, which teaches riding skills to dozens of kids at day camp each summer and offers hands-on bike repair and maintenance lessons from a garage in Hudson’s Oakdale Park. Through the Co-op’s Earn-a-Bike program, youth participants who restore a donated bicycle also get to take it home.
One family of participants in particular has stuck with the Co-op’s lead mechanic, Arone Dyer. After moving from the Bronx to Hudson, only the oldest of the four kids knew how to ride a bike. The oldest brother became an apprentice at the Co-op, while Dyer taught the three younger siblings to ride. This summer, one of those younger brothers became an apprentice mechanic himself.
“He has become a huge advocate for the Co-op as a resource for that type of education and it being a cool place to be and to learn how to fix bikes,” Dyer says. “And now all four of them have bikes.”
Other organizations are expanding access to cycling, too. The YMCA of Kingston’s six-week Bike It! program offers lessons and rides for kids age 10 and up. It also offers a bike repair class for cyclists as young as 14.
Some schools in the Hudson Valley are also finding ways to teach kids about bikes and get them in the saddle. At the Mount Academy in Esopus, high school students in Mike’s Bikes club learn how to fix flat tires, tune derailleurs, true wheels, and perform other repairs that keep bicycles rolling. The club even offers affordable tune-ups, deep cleans, and full rebuilds for anyone in the community.
“In addition to repairing bikes, we also ride them. We go mountain biking or build and repair trails,” says Allan Meier, who supervises the club. “Having basic mountain biking skills allows students to get out on the many great trail systems in the Hudson Valley.”
A handful of schools are even incorporating cycling directly into the physical education curriculum. Since the 2024-25 school year, gym class has looked a little different for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders at Hudson Junior High School. Students are assigned bicycles and helmets, learn the parts of a bicycle and the fundamentals of safe riding, then put those lessons into practice on supervised rides in Hudson.
Further north, the nonprofit organization Shredders MTB helps schools in the Capital Region incorporate cycling into physical education by providing bicycles, helmets, and teacher training.
The nonprofit launched the country’s first-ever K-12 Bikes in Schools program in the Saratoga Springs City School District in 2025, giving each of its 5,800 students — including those with special needs — the opportunity to ride a bike during gym class.
And down the valley, students at Horizons-on-the-Hudson Elementary School in Newburgh get the chance to learn the basics of safe riding in Orange County’s first Bicycle Garden — a miniature streetscape that lets the youngest generation of cyclists practice navigating roundabouts, crosswalks, and intersections. In a city where roughly 30% of households lack access to a car, learning to travel safely by bike can open up new opportunities for independence and mobility.
But even in areas without formal programs, grassroots efforts have sprung up to help bring the benefits of cycling to kids of all ages. Perhaps the most visible example is the bike bus, in which students ride to school together — either on their own bikes or on the back of cargo bikes pedaled by their parents or guardians — along a preplanned route led by adult volunteers. One of the country’s most visible bike buses started in Montclair, N.J. Communities from NYC to Western New York have picked up the idea, which is now rolling in the valley as well. The Chatsworth Bike Bus runs four routes on fair-weather Fridays in Larchmont-Mamaroneck, for instance.
“It gives us the opportunity to have safety in numbers and be more visible to cars,” says Daniel Vatsky, who started a weekly bike bus to Beacon’s South Avenue Elementary School in June. “Within that pack of riders, kids who might not be confident riding independently get the chance to make little mistakes and get corrections while parents keep an eye on things.”
Beyond helping children develop the confidence to ride on public streets, the bike bus also makes the morning commute easier for families.
“There’s the benefit of not having to find parking or deal with the lineup of cars that accumulate when we’re trying to do pick-up and drop-off,” Vatsky explains. “We can just roll out of the driveway and go door to door.”
But perhaps the biggest reward of starting the bike bus, Vatsky says, has been watching his 7-year-old daughter reap the benefits of a morning ride before class begins. “She’s not arriving at school having just sat in the car and disengaged with her surroundings,” he says. “She’s had her head up, she’s been feeling the breeze on her face, she’s gotten some exercise, and she’s had an experience before she even gets in the door.”
He hopes that those rides become more than just a weekly tradition for his daughter as she gets older. Growing up by the Erie Canal, Vatsky remembers hopping on bikes with friends and exploring the locks for hours at a time. He’d like to see today’s children have that same freedom and independence again — and he’s hardly alone.
A recent statewide poll from Parks & Trails New York found that 80% of New Yorkers say having safe places to walk and bike is important to their well-being, while nearly half say they would walk or bike more if they felt safer doing so.
